Review Mining Charter’s proposed home ownership model

Corporate monitoring organisation Bench Marks Foundation has long proposed that all platinum producers in South Africa, which promote private home ownership in line with the proposed Mining Charter, review this model, says executive director John Capel.

He says the organisation’s surveys have revealed that workers generally do not want to buy houses. “What they want is subsidised rental accommodation or revolving stock accommodation.

“Unless and until government and mining houses start to listen to the workers and act according to their interests and wishes, the mining housing crisis is never going to be resolved.”

Capel says all the housing model under the Mining Charter has succeeded in doing is destabilising the Marikana community, where 44 miners were killed by police at London- and Johannesburg-listed platinum mining company Lonmin’s Marikana mine in 2012, when they participated in an unprotected strike.

Speaking to Mining Weekly in January, Bench Marks said, the latest violence in Marikana, owing to a housing dispute, has seen community leader Charlie Sabata killed by a mob.

Capel explains that the housing dispute emanates from Lonmin having donated land earmarked to house mineworkers to the local council in spite of pleas by the community not to do so. Members of the community proceeded to allocate houses meant for the mineworkers to themselves, with the council successfully taking legal action to reclaim the houses.

Bench Marks told Mining Weekly that tensions were running high in the Marikana community, near Rustenburg, over the housing dispute.

“It is imperative that the housing issue is addressed without further delay,” Capel warned last month, stressing that the longer this issue dragged out, the greater the potential for conflict to escalate and for frustrations to boil over.

In December, Mining Weekly reported that Lonmin was reviewing its housing plan and was confident of submitting a compliant plan to the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR). This followed engagement with and directions provided by the DMR in September concerning certain revisions to Lonmin’s housing plan.

President Jacob Zuma said last year that the DMR would ask Lonmin for a compliant housing plan and warned that the department could revoke the company’s mining rights if it did not comply.

He was giving an update on steps taken by various government departments to implement the Farlam Commission of Inquiry’s recommendations.

However, Capel asserts that Bench Marks had, as long ago as 2013, revealed Lonmin’s failure to build 5 500 houses promised for workers and had at the time called on the DMR to revoke the mine’s licence.

“Government has consistently refused to heed our calls for action on Lonmin’s recalcitrance. “For the President to now be threatening action is way too late to be effective,” he says.

Lonmin said last year that it had implemented a number of measures as part of its ongoing housing plan and had completed the conversion of all hostels into 1 908 single and 776 family units.

The miner added that it had taken proactive steps to meet its obligations, despite the unfavourable economic climate, by including long-term, sustainable housing solutions in its capital expenditure budgets.

Bench Marks is involved in continuing discussions with Lonmin in terms of how the company can adequately address the legitimate housing needs of its workers, adding that the majority are living in “unacceptable squalor in shantytowns”.

“In our latest discussions with the company, we have been encouraged [by] a more open-minded attitude to the housing issue, which appears to be emanating from management,” Capel said in January.

Bench Marks has called for the social and labour plans of all mining companies, not just those of Lonmin, to be audited as they are all suspect in respect of their compliance.